What I Did This Summer

Not much.

I moved into my new office at work and puttered around happily in there, working on this or that project. And we spent a beautiful week with our dear Theologiggle friends at Lake Michigan. And we drove the children around. And around and around.

We did do a lot of cleaning. We cleaned the house over and over for the various anonymous people who came through to look at it. Alas, still no buyer, though we’ve come close a couple times. And that’s about it. No elaborate vacations, no trips across the country (thank goodness), no major family events. This all seemed restful at the time, but now I look back and wonder what on earth I accomplished, besides a very clean kitchen sink.

Therefore, in an attempt to feel as if three months of my life has not floated by uselessly, I present:

Bite-Size Reviews.

It turns out that between car trips and scrubbing, I did wind up reading quite a bit and watching a few movies.

My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey
Jill Bolte Taylor

A brain scientist has a stroke at age 37 (caused by a blood clot) and records the whole experience in scientific detail. Her left brain seriously damaged, she entered a kind of pure right-brain experience, which resembles nirvana or similar religious ecstasies. Six years later, she had at last regained full function, but also become a more peaceful person by learning to “turn off” her left-brain at will (sort of). Her story is fascinating in its portrayal of brain function, but annoying in its exhortations to the reader. Her bottom line: you can enter bliss whenever you wish by training your brain.

On the other hand…

The Female Brain
Louann Brizendine

This book uses neuroscience and hormone research to explain hormonal influence on various stages of female experience. Very intriguing, but depressing. Her bottom line: Sure, you have free will and all, but frankly your female hormones powerfully influence everything you think and do, and they are pretty likely to drive you to madness at various semi-predictable intervals.

After reading both these books, I can’t decide whether I am helpless against my hormonal surges or hopeless in my inability to enter bliss by sheer will.

Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives
Wayne Muller

My pastor friend Dawn was right when she recommended this as a wise, balanced treatment of Sabbath. I found it inspiring. The one problem with Sabbath-keeping that Muller does not much address, though, is dealing with the other people in your household. One cannot rest very well unilaterally. And persuading the others in your household to alter their Sabbath practices—just the thought of it exhausts me. Yes, Rienstras, I’m talking about you.

The Secret Life of Bees
Sue Monk Kidd

I read this because we wanted to invite the author to Festival. Turns out she can’t make it, but I don’t regret reading the novel—a page-turner and an understandable bestseller. The portrayal of a nurturing, feminine community could have been an eye-roller, but the bee-keeping motif saves it. I’m not a big expert on Southern writers, but what is up with all these adolescent female protagonists with a tragic mother and a mean daddy? Is that some sort of genre convention or something?

Gods in Alabama
Joshilyn Jackson

Wooooo-doggie, is this a tale! I flew through this book, which is part murder mystery, part romance novel, part comedy of manners. Jackson is a Southern writer with a cracklin sense of humor. The novel is wonderfully constructed to reveal outrageous past events piece by piece, throwing repeated surprises that will cause the reader to emit audible gasps (at least this reader). Lots of frank sexual content here, so not recommended for young, innocent readers. Jackson will be coming to the Festival next spring.

The Pine Island Paradox
Kathleen Dean Moore

A philosopher with hiking boots and a backpack. Moore is a philosophy professor at Oregon State, as well as a nature writer. She was recommended to me by some nature-writer friends, and it looks like she’ll be at Festival, too. I appreciate her clear, elegant writing and her interesting digressions into philosophical musings. Nature writing traditionally involves a kind of lonely, rugged, individual human voice, but Moore self-consciously connects her love for the wild with her love for family. Her concern for humans in community with each other and the natural world makes her work fresh and relevant.

Interloper
L. S. Klatt

A volume of poems by my colleague at Calvin, whom we know as Lew. I loved reading this because it felt to me that I was exercising different parts of my brain. I’m used to reading poetry that requires a lot of intellectual puzzle-solving, but Lew’s poems make sense through sound and image-play. I found this, as well as the overarching metaphor of poet as interloper, quite delightful.

And now, some movies…

Star Trek (the new movie)
Loved it. Love the young Kirk and Spock, in fact I like them far better than the originals. Great character work from all the actors, reflecting careful research into canonical ST. Not impressed with the villain, though. So you turned to evil in response to the murder of your young wife and baby, and now your plan is revenge. That old routine? Really? And I was thoroughly disappointed by the ridiculous reliance on “red matter” to propel the plot. Visually striking, but it reminded me of those huge red balls outside Target, and I kept expecting to see product placement. Also, am I getting old, or were some of those frames so full of exploding debris as to be indecipherable by the human brain? Good thing I didn’t see it in IMAX. Despite my complaints, a fun movie ride.

Up
I came out of the theater with this thought: that was the most unpredictable story I have ever seen on screen. I found the first thirty minutes poignant and moving, of course, but felt less and less emotionally connected as the story rumbled along. Still, “Let go of that old dream, for heaven’s sake, and move on to something new and real” is hardly a stock message these days. So points for that.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Yeah, I can see what all the fuss was about. The whole ships-passing-in-the-time-space-continuum premise pleased my sci-fi-loving side, but I mostly enjoyed the historical backdrops and even the sets. That New Orleans old folks home itself may have been my favorite character. And yes, the acting was wonderful yada yada yada.

Charlie Bartlett
One of those artsy films, but don’t let that put you off. The premise is that a high school kid, stuck in yet another new school, tries to gain popularity by blackmarketing psychopharmaceuticals out of the boys’ bathroom, and ends up serving as the unofficial psychologist for a lot of messed up teens. The story could have taken a lurid dive, but it focuses on character and stays sweet and quirky and very witty. The kid’s mother all by herself is worth a spot in the Netflix queue.

Into the Wild
This one was recommended to me by many male students after discussing literary tragedy a few semesters ago. I’m not sure it connects to classical tragedy, but I can see why my students love the film: it is saturated with young adult male restlessness. A bright, sensitive fellow runs away after college, determined to live deliberately a la Thoreau. He travels the country meeting other free spirits until he achieves the solitude he craves in the Alaskan wild. And then… well, I won’t give away the ending. This beautiful film was directed by—what??!—Sean Penn, and I thought it was well put together with subtle character work and gorgeous cinematography. I wished I were watching it on a big screen instead of my little pre-HD, pre-flat-screen contraption.

Wit
Emma Thompson is a goddess. Every project she takes on, from Beatrice (Much Ado about Nothing) to Margaret Wilcox (Howard’s End) to Professor Trelawney (various Harry Potter movies) to Vivian Bearing (Wit), she accomplishes with breathtaking excellence. For this beautiful film version of the off-Broadway play about an English professor dying of cancer, Thompson helped write the screenplay and played the starring role—to perfection. She is my paradigm for the woman with the most admirably flawless career record (closely followed by Cokie Roberts).


So now the summer’s over, and it’s back to Beowulf and sonnets. At least I have the new season of Lost and some more Merlin to look forward to when I've had enough of the heavy-duty stuff.

The Orb of Happiness

Today was a beautiful, sunny, proto-spring day. It took us a while, though, to recall the name of that bright yellow thing in the sky. Here in Michigan, we haven't seen much of it in the last five months. The sun! Oh yeah, that's what it's called.

Lack of sunlight tends to depress one's spirits, a fact we Michiganders deal with as best we can through indoor sports, or quiet wintry hobbies like knitting, or burying ourselves in our work, or perhaps less healthy strategies such as retail therapy, yelling at the children, or self-medicating with chocolate.

At our house, Jacob and I have been indulging in old episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Sometimes the episodes are full of the best in good old-fashioned sci-fi: cool gadgety pseudo-science, explosions, Klingon battles, and regular characters amusingly possessed by aliens. Those episodes are silly. Well, sillier. Other times we're reduced to groaning at Ferengi love triangles. Ugh.

But perhaps DS9 has inspired my latest coping strategy for the late winter blahs: light therapy. One of the DS9 ethnic groups - the Bajorans - have these orb thingies that are supposed to create divinely-inspired, dreamy experiences when you open their little casings and look at them. They've got the orb of wisdom, the orb of prophecy and change, the orb of time, and so on. (The curious or similarly geeky can learn all about it here).

So when, at a friend's recommendation, Ron bought me light therapy lamps for Valentine's Day, I decided we should call them the "Orbs of Happiness."

See how happy I look? These little boxes blast you with full-spectrum light and are supposed to put your skewed body clock and your sunlight deprived, mood-controlling body chemicals back in balance. The brand name is actually "HappyLite." And I think they might really work. We'll give it a few more months and see if the intially promising effects continue.

Meanwhile, may I suggest to the manufacturers that they offer the Deluxe DS9 version, complete with nifty Bajoran casing? I would buy one in a minute, and I bet I'm not the only hopeless geek who would....

My Grandpa Always Told Me...

...that you've got to toot your own horn, 'cause no one else is going to toot it for you.

Guess Grandpa wasn't right about everything.

Or he didn't know anything about the CICW.

That Sermon Needs a Bigger But

So yesterday we're all at the dinner table, talking about the morning's church service. The conversation turned to the sermon, titled "Unjust suffering," and offered by our fabulous pastor, Jack Roeda (happy 25 years, Jack!). The text was 1 Peter 2:13-25, a passage addressed to slaves about appropriate submission. Next week he's tackling the next pericope: submission of wives and women. Gee, good luck with that one, Jack.

We all agreed that Jack did a great job explaining what the passage says and proposing how it might apply to our lives. Yet we also agreed -- especially given the history of a troubling text like this one and others like it -- that sometimes it's important to articulate what the passage doesn't say. It means this, BUT not that. Deb was the one who encapsulated our thoughts so memorably: "I guess the sermon needed a bigger but." I'm going to be using that one in my preaching classes this year, I'm pretty sure.

And it's not a bad way of talking about those occasions in sermons or political speeches or, heck, English 101 papers when the possible objections are so near the surface that they need to be addressed. Deb says that from now on, instead of telling her students "You should add a section in which you refute possible objections," she's going to write, "This paper needs a bigger but."

Resilience (or Ruth's Revenge)

So first thing after they moved in
the neighbors dug up Ruth’s old garden,
a front-yard oddity that had appeared —
shaggy, extravagant, sprawling — wherever
her springtime sweat cast its charms.

The new people pulled out
her spindly jungle of asparagus; tore up
the nasturtium border whose sensuous petals,
like mangoes, you could pluck and eat;
they hacked down six-foot sunflowers;

mowed over silky native grasses that flowed
on breezy days like a woman’s hair.
The little paw-paw tree they decided to keep.
They mowed around it.

Grinning and waving at us as we strolled by,
they spent a hot September weekend
digging and seeding, laying straw,
staking off squares of flat, potential decency.

The straw muddied, winds came,
snow fell then melted, the weather warmed,
and Ruth’s earth took its revenge:

A hundred tulips shot up
in the feeble spring lawn,
raising first their cocked leaves,
then their green, defiant heads.



(c) 2008 Debra Rienstra

Ream o' Fun

Yes, there have been some cobwebs accumulating on this blog, and now it's time to explain the neglect and brush the cobwebs aside (thanks for the metaphor, Mary).

After about three years of labor (sure, let's have another metaphor) we have at last managed to give birth to the manuscript of a book. It may or may not end up being called Worship Words: Attending to the Power of Language in Songs, Prayers, Sermons, and All of Worship. The good people at Baker will make the final decision on title. But it is a book about language in worship, and it has indeed been a collaborative effort.

Now that we've finished it (and quick--before it comes back to us for formatting decisions, proofreading, permissions fuss, etc.), it feels good to move on with life and maybe get back to all the other things that we have been neglecting. Such as blogging, raising the children, and even brushing the very real cobwebs out of the corners of our scruffy house.

Whew!

Evidently, we have discovered the line of preoccupation beyond which blogging does not occur. It's a line formed by Ph.D. comprehensive exams and shaded with a major public lecture situation.

But all that is over now! Ron spent November and much of December up to his elbows in esoteric theology books and up to his eyebrows in esoteric theological thoughts. He completed the comprehensive exams the Friday before Christmas. Still haven't heard back yet on whether he passed them all, but we're cautiously optimistic, and we'll post news here as soon as we have it.

Meanwhile, he prepped for two intensive classes on Worship and Homiletics that he's in the midst of teaching right now at WTS, and he completed an adult education curriculum for the CRC on worship. Not entirely sure how that got done by the deadline (December 16), but a bit of help from me and the promised financial bonus for on-time delivery no doubt had something to do with it.

Meanwhile, I spent Christmas break preparing to teach interim and to give a January Series lecture. The lecture happened yesterday. Thankfully, it went fine, at least according to some witnesses of possible extreme bias. It's hard for me to know, truly, as the whole thing felt rather like an out-of-body experience. I can say that the Calvin staff was at their best: organized, hospitable, cheerful. As someone once remarked about Calvin, "the place runs like butta." That's often absolutely true. I hope all our guest speakers feel as welcome and appreciated.

I also found out just how kind and supportive my good friends and colleagues can be. I have a lot to be thankful for.

Let's see: what else? Sometime in the last few weeks Christmas happened, too. I think. Not entirely sure, actually. It's all a blur. Hmmm. Well, we do have photographic evidence that Miriam, Philip, and Ron played key, bathrobe-style roles in our church's Christmas Eve pageant. Miriam made for a very blonde, blue-eyed Mary. Philip played the young Jesus (for which he was gleefully teased by his siblings--"What would Philip do?" etc.). Ron drew upon his seminary memories of certain professors and convincingly portrayed the wicked King Herod. Thankfully, Jacob and I just lurked among the musicians, playing our instruments along with the hymns.

So at last, after all that, life slows down a bit and we're back to just work and school and the usual round of soccer and church stuff. Poor Jacob finally got a haircut yesterday after a month of looking like David Cassidy circa 1974 after misplacing his mousse and blowdryer.

Oh, in other news, Ron has at last succumbed to two years of propaganda (the result of my politics of food class) and become a food zealot. Michael Pollan's new book, In Defense of Food, toppled him over the edge. The children are completely dismayed. Now it's not just Mom making snide remarks about high-fructose corn syrup. Now Dad is constantly asking "Would your great grandmother recognize that as food?" and writing things like "organic chickpeas" into our family menu.

That about catches us up, I guess. Now back to our usual blogging on random nutty ideas and insignificant news items.

How Do You Measure Mental Focus?

Jacob and I were arguing the other day about whether or not Jacob should spend his own money to buy a Wii. For those of you blessedly ignorant of the gaming console world, the Wii is a loathesome, evil box of devil-spawn that people willingly spend hard-earned money on and invite right into their living rooms to emit death-rays in their direction. At least, that's what I was arguing. Jacob was arguing that it would afford harmless amusement with which to pass a few free hours.

In an effort to make my devil-spawn argument more persuasive, I tried to explain to Jake that if he spent x minutes per day playing video games, he would have x minutes less to do other wholesome, productive things like practice his violin, do his homework, juggle a soccer ball, do our taxes, etc. I also tried to argue that playing video games actually has a deleterious effect on one's ability to concentrate. It actually makes you dumber, in other words. Not having any hard scientific evidence for this readily to hand, I decided I could at least sound scientific, so I posited a new unit of measure: the concetron.

The concetron is a measure of mental focus. "You'll use up concetrons you could be using on something else!" I argued. Jacob was willing to concede this point. "You'll reduce your concetron capacity!" I persisted. This one he was not willing to concede.

Actually, the whole Wii argument was just a casual hypothetical on his part. What he really wants is a laptop someday. However, the idea of the concetron has caught on in our family, and we have since had even more heated discussions trying to determine...

1) How do we define the base unit of 1 concetron? Is it, say, the amount of mental focus required to recite your address? the Gettysburg address?
2) Are there different kinds of concetrons? or can you divide a given activity into a concetron distribution chart? So, to play the piano requires a certain number of concetrons for the physical movements, a certain number for musical expression, etc.
3) If we define concetron capacity as the amount of concetrons one can expend (and is that the right verb?) in a given amount of time, then can certain activities increase or decrease one's concetron capacity? If so, how?

I swear we spent 20 minutes driving in the van one day arguing over this stuff with great passion and not a little rancor.

One thing we agreed on was that we run out of concetrons by the end of the day and have to replenish them through sleep. I plan to use this excuse to avoid helping the kids with homework after 9 p.m. (Sorry! Out of concetrons!)

So if you are a scientifically minded person, and you have suggestions about this, let us know. We're particularly interested in designs for a Star-Trek-prop-style piece of headgear that could measure concetron output.

If, on the other hand, you would like to argue for the benefits of the Wii, get thee behind me.

What Will Happen in Harry Potter 7?

[WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD for those who have not read the 9^th, 12^th, 14^th, 16^th, 17^th, and 18^th best-selling books of all time].

Our friend Jana Riess has posted her predictions on her blog, but I thought I would reply here rather than stuffing her comment box. Not long ago, Jacob read the Mugglenet prediction book to which Jana refers, which sparked a whole flurry of impassioned speculation at our house. Ron commented on Jana’s post, but he hardly exhausted the substance (or fluff?) of Rienstra household discussions. So here come some of my predictions, linked directly to Jana’s. (I apologize up front for referring to J.K. Rowling as “Jo.” Overly familiar, I know. But hey, she can call me “Deb” anytime she wants.)

1. Jana says: Either Fred or George is wearing a red shirt. Oh, no, I can’t agree with that one. That would be too awful. Surely the flame of frivolity and silliness cannot be snuffed out -- or even so sadly diminished in the world; Jo is too firm a believer in the redemptive power of humor. Fred and George’s mischief is more than comic relief: I think they are twin elements of hope and resilience. Remember their genius revenge on Umbridge as they left Hogwarts? (This is one of my favorite scenes in all the books.) So please: keep the twins alive! I do agree that a Weasley family member will probably have to go. Ron (my Ron, that is) has long predicted it will be Arthur Weasley, on the grounds that Arthur is another father figure for Harry, and as archetypal patterns would have it, our young hero’s father figures have been slipping away one by one. Of course, it would be lovely if Percy would finally, as Jana says, come to his senses, do something heroic and restitutive, and then conveniently bite it. But that might be just too easy. In any case, I think it’s true that one way or another poor Molly is in for more agony.

2. Jana suspects/hopes: the Gryffindor horcrux is Fawkes. Nah. I predict that the Gryffindor horcrux is something we haven’t encountered yet, and Harry will find it at Godric’s Hollow. My reasoning is that in every book, Jo has introduced new characters, new objects, and new ideas, all of them clever and intriguing. The Gryffindor horcrux (if it exists) would be far too important an object to be some old thing we’ve seen already. Harry’s trip to Godric’s Hollow has to yield some big revelations, and I think this object will be one of them. After all, Voldy would have had plenty of time to create a horcrux after Lily’s death. Who’s going to stop him or notice? One-year-old Harry?

This prediction also eliminates Harry’s scar and the invisibility cloak as horcrux candidates. More on this later.

5. Jana wonders what caused Harry’s scar because it couldn’t have been caused by the AK curse. I say: Why not? It’s true that the AK curse doesn’t usually leave a mark, but then again it usually kills the victim, too. Something went weird that night, so it’s possible the curse did leave a mark.

6. Jana’s friend says: Crookshanks is really Regulus Black. Maybe. Ron covers this in his comment on Jana’s blog.

Now to respond to Jana’s wish list.

1. Neville beats the CRAP out of Bellatrix LeStrange. You go, Neville!

2. Harry saves Snape’s life. Sure, that’s possible. I think Snape will have to make some difficult decision in a crisis situation that will force him to stop sitting on the fence (see Ron’s comment) and show his ultimate loyalty.

3. The Malfoys are outed as vampires. Amusing, but I’m not convinced on this one, primarily because I had some vampire experts I know (for real) comment on the possibility and they don’t buy it.

4. The Ravenclaw horcrux is, as Ron has predicted, some loopy thing the Lovegood family owns. Yeah, I love this one. If Jo didn’t think of it already, she should have.

6. Jana wants to know more about Harry’s grandparents. Yeah, I think it’s pretty clear that we know virtually nothing about Harry’s ancestry because Jo has been waiting to reveal that he is a descendent of Gryffindor.

See Jana’s blog for a few more of her wishes.

Here are a couple things I personally would like to see in book 7.

A. I would like to see Harry live. I’m worried about confirming yet again that the path to heroism for 17-year-old males is to sacrifice their lives in the battle against evil. I know, I know. Genuine evil cannot be defeated by holding hands, making nice, and just getting along. But history—and current events—show how very easy it is to mask the will to power in a neat, black-and-white ideology and then send young men to die to save us all from “evil.” Granted, good and evil is pretty unambiguous in the Harry Potter world, but still: can we please honor forms of heroism other than young men dying? As the mother of two sons, I feel pretty strongly about this. People fight evil every day through the long, slow slog of constant resistance, diplomacy, incremental systemic change. And in the end, ultimate evil was (is/will be) defeated by absorbing evil without passing it on. So let’s see Harry 1) cope with the complex mixture of his own impulses both to defend goodness and to exact revenge, 2) defeat Voldy, and 3) realize that even after Voldy is gone, the battle continues. Moreover, just literarily speaking, it’s much more of a challenge for a writer to let her hero fight his great battle and then figure out how he will go on living afterwards. Come on, Jo. You’re up to the challenge.

B. Here’s my theory about the last line of the book. I don’t really mean it, but it always makes my kids laugh when I say it. I think that if Harry has any sense, he will reproduce with Ginny ASAP so that whatever happens, he will have an heir. I know they’re young, but hey, times are tough. They could have a double wedding with Bill and Fleur. (Ginny and Fleur could armwrestle over the tiara: fun!) Honeymoon details could be kept very discreet; Jo has been so respectful of Harry’s romantic privacy thus far. Once Ginny is pregnant she can go into deep hiding to protect her and the baby. (No twins, please. Too Star Wars-y.) So then, picture the end of the book: Harry has done away with Voldy. He’s reunited with Ginny. There they stand over the crib, looking down at their brand new little heir of Gryffindor. Ginny says, with gentle affection: “Look, Harry: he has your scar!” THE END

C. Seriously, I really hope Jo has been careful in Book 7 about how many tricks she pulls. Anything really wacky—Ron is Dumbledore from the future, Hagrid is Molly’s sister in drag , Buckbeak makes friends with a Norwegian Ridgeback and they swoop in to save the day at some point —will detract from the emotional heft that she surely wishes to build in this book. This is why I don’t like the idea of Harry’s scar or the invisibility cloak being a horcrux. I think this would create an irritating “fooled ya!” effect for the reader. After all these years, I’m still peeved about Madeye Moody being Barty Crouch all along in Book 4. Scabbers as Peter Pettigrew was cutting it close enough, but the Madeye business really bugged. I don’t want the series to end on that kind of sour note. Cleverness is great, but this book has to have a seriousness not dimished by authorly pirouettes.

It pains me in all of this to say that THE BOOK IS ALREADY DONE and copies are probably pouring off the presses by the thousands as we speak. It’s a shame Jo didn’t have access to our brilliant ideas before she finished. Well, she can always make corrections for the paperback…

What do you other Potter fans think is in store come July 21?

Get thee behind me, Fat

Thou shalt place outside thy door a vat of fat. And this shall be a sign unto the angel of heart disease to pass over thy house. Purge thy dwelling of saturated fat (polyunsaturated is OK in smallish amounts) and purify thy house. Set outside your dwelling, then, the vat of fat to signify your purity, so that you may be holy and live long in the land. - Hezekiah 12:33

It all started years ago, when I (Deb) read the book Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. And now we've come to this. Quasi-biblical rituals designed to appease the diet gods. Well, that's what it looks like, anyway. What really happened is that reading Fast Food Nation caused me to give up fast food (not a big sacrifice for me) and then to become more interested in the politics of food. That led me to design my English 101 class this year around the topic, and that led to further reading and many research papers on the topic from my students.

That all led to inviting my honors English 101 class for dinner on Friday last, with the students bringing various foods, both virtuous and un-, to share around. One pair of students brought banana wontons, which required deep frying, and that led to a pan full of hot oil set outside the door to cool, which I of course promptly forgot about for a couple days. So the quasi-biblical ritual was not intentional. But there it is.

All this study of food politics has brought about, as I call it, "collateral damage" in our household. In other words, we are actually eating healthier these days. We've been especially fond of the "super foods" concept, which involves emphasizing those foods that are especially high in all kinds of invisible, magical nutrients like betacarotenes and flavonoids. They also taste good.

We're not "food nazis" by any means. But here's some recommended reading, with the warning that you may find yourself, someday soon, carefully perusing the sweet potatoes at the local farmer's market. And putting pots of oil outside your door.

Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation
Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma
Michael Pollan, Unhappy Meals
Bryant and Anna Lappe, Grub

superb surprises

This past summer, I spent two wonderful weeks directing a Calvin Seminars in Christian Scholarship seminar. We gathered 17 incredible writers from a variety of disciplines including publishing, academia, and the pastorate. Our seminar was titled "Writing as Christian Proclamation in Contemporary Contexts: The Truth's Superb Surprise." We spent our time together reading excellent books and discussing the Christian writing "scene," trying to figure out how to speak the big truths in rich, relevant ways.

The entire affair spoiled me as a teacher. When else in my teaching life will I show up with one or two little questions to launch the discussion, which will then take off and go on for three hours while I just relax and enjoy?? We reached some intriguing insights, I think, many of which are available in our daily summaries, posted here and here.

We came away from our time together having launched a little service project called "Write on the Money." This project has encountered some unexpected and humorous drama over the last two weeks. We are thinking perhaps the project should be called "Write on the Money We Thought We Had." The whole story is now emerging on our group blog.

Birthday Bashes

This past week was a big week of birthday celebration. Jacob turned 11 on August 1 (see the picture: candles 7+4=11), and on the 7th Deb turned... well, look at her. About 29, I think.

For Jacob's special day we went to John Ball Zoo where Jacob got to ride a camel, watch a Pacific tide roll in, and generally having some cool animal adventures. (Not quite as cool as his Aunt's, but cool nonetheless).

Deb's big day involved a trip to Meijer gardens and a family gathering in the evening which included a bit of gift-giving and lots of laughter courtesy of Dad Rienstra, one of the world's worst joke-tellers (which makes him doubly funny as we all wait for him to flub the punch line).

Award Week

Warning: This is a blatant boast-post. Please ignore if you hate this sort of thing.

It began on Tuesday night, at Jacob's orchestra concert. The elementary orchestra played--more or less in the keys of D and G Major--and a few students did solos. Granted, standards were not especially high. But when our boy sounded the first notes of his solo, it was fun to watch the other parents' jaws drop. Jacob played even better than he does at home, which might suggest the virtues of playing conditions that do not involve dishes clanking and little brothers running around.

Then, on Thursday, I attended the Fuller Seminary awards convocation. No big surprises here. I knew I had received a Brehm Fellowship since, well, that's how we've been paying my tuition all year. Still it was a nice occasion and I enjoyed getting some props from the be-robed Fuller faculty. That's me up there with President Mouw and my fellow Brehmmie, Eric Jacobsen. Really. It is. Stupid flash.


Next up: Mia. Friday morning at 8 a.m. was middle-school awards "chapel." It was less a chapel than an occasion on which middle schoolers could enjoy screaming and cheering for their classmates with impunity. Mia had no idea that she was getting an award, but fortunately, the school had notified her mom and dad, so we were there. To keep the secret from Mia, we had to come up with blatant lies about "having a meeting" that morning in order to explain why we were dressed and ready so early. Each teacher gave an award to one student in each subject in each grade level. Mia, all our geeky math-and-science friends will be happy to learn, got the seventh grade science award, and a shiny bit of atom-shaped bling-bling that I proudly wore as a tie-tack the rest of the day.

And last but not least, the rumors have now been confirmed. Deb's book So Much More was chosen by Christianity Today magazine to receive an Award of Merit for 2006 in the apologetics/evangelism category. Whoo hoo! It's great for Deb as a young whipper-snapper writer to be among a hoary assembly of authors the likes of N.T. Wright, Rowan Williams, Robert Wuthnow, Eugene Peterson, and other old white guys.

That's it this week. But Pip's award assembly is coming up soon. Last year he got best "Christian Attitude." Let's hope he's got the spiritual resources to deal with a) his insufferably self-pleased parents and siblings and b) a house whose current state of upheaval guarantees that the Rienstra family will win no housekeeping accolades anytime soon.

Happy Anniversary to Us!

As of today, April 30, we have been married 18 years. Just look at those little punks who thought they could keep those momentous, life-changing promises. Wow.

And now look at us--three children, a mortgage, a minivan, one-and-a-half Ph.D.s, and several cross-country moves later.

Last year on our anniversary my mother asked me how many years we had been married. Seventeen, I told her. "Well," she replied, "you're getting there." She and my dad have been married for 57 years. Talk about perspective.

Still, we've lived a lot of life in 18 years. I'm feeling proud, as if this is something we've accomplished, and grateful, because it's not. It's grace.

Festival of Faith & Writing

Last weekend I had the joy of attending Festival 2006 at Calvin. Since I missed the one in 2004 while we were in Britain, I was especially eager to get to this one.

Some highlights:

Since I was a speaker flying in from out of town, I got to stay at the Prince Center. That is the life, my friends. Great room all to myself, excellent service, and you get to hang out with all the famous writers at breakfast because they're staying there, too. The publisher exhibit area as well as many of the sessions are all right there in the building. The Prince Center, I have to admit, has transformed the Festival from a makeshift circus to a classy, organized event.

I finally met several amazing people whom I knew only from e-mail correspondence: Leslie Leyland Fields, Andy Crouch, Lauren Winner, and Donna Kehoe just to name a few. Also got to spend some quality time with my editor at Jossey-Bass, Sheryl Fullerton, and her colleague Julianna Gustafson.

Did a session on "the new apologetics" with Donald Miller. It's impossible not to feel old and square next to this guy who is the epitome of hip and cool and has sold a zillion books. But according to audience members, the session came off well. At the very least it was nice for me to meet Donald Miller and to think about interesting developments in the Christian book world.

Saw a number of former students, all grown up now. Sigh. Saw a number of my Calvin colleagues, happily just the same as ever. Sigh.

Got inspired. I was asked to host a session for Julia Kasdorf, whose poetry I had never read. I ordered her books ahead of time and found myself becoming a fan. Reading her work has inspired me to work harder at my poetry and have higher standards. Also got inspired by a workshop on "reality marketing." Time to get more serious about promoting my books.

Speaking of, one of the things I learned was "put your readers to work for you." Word of mouth is the most powerful force in book sales. So if you have read *So Much More* and liked it, would you find a way in the next few weeks to spread the word? Example: review on amazon, tell your pastor, tell your book club, buy it for a friend, send the website URL to someone. Thanks! Note: If you read it and hated it, just keep quiet. Thanks.

Role Reversal

BIZARRO WORLD
a screenplay

Act I

Scene: Interior house. 360 degree pan: dishes, clothes and other household miscellany scattered about in messy fashion; background noise of children having light-saber fights, complaining about cleaning house; dusting rags, vaccum and other supplies in plain view.

Zoom into bathroom, where we find RON with mop in hand, swabbing a filthy floor. He stops for a moment to catch his breath, wipes sweat from his brow.

* * *

Cut to Living Room, where DEB has just sat down on the couch. She picks up the TV remote, turns it on, and begins flipping through stations. She hits some basketball, and stops surfing. We pan away, and find RON again in the bathroom, picking up the toilet scrubber. Suddenly a voice calls from other room:

DEB: Ron! Hey! How come we aren't watching any of March Madness today?

Ron in bathroom tries to fit his head in the bowl and flushes.

Fade out

Foothold

Among Debra's many accolades, we can now add this: published hymn-writer. She recently entered -- and won -- a hymn search contest held at Fuller Seminary. One purpose of the song was to commemorate the Fortieth Anniversary of the School of Psychology. Another was to articulate something about trust in God for healing. Finally, the theme of the worship service at which the hymn would debut was "Looking back, looking ahead." Thus, a hymn that shot an arrow in that diretion would get bonus points.

Deb thought Psalm 25 was an excellent expression of this sort of prayer, and so used it as a basis for her hymn text. She wrote it to be sung to the tune Kingsfold.

Here is the text and melody laid out, with chords hand-written above the staff. This harmonic arrangement of the tune is courtesy of the jazz pianist/preacher Bill Carter. To get a sense of the arrangement, click here for a very rough, homemade Mp3. The violinist is a particularly talented 10-year old, and the guitarist is, well, me.

We were part of that "Looking Back, Looking Ahead" service this past weekend where the hymn was first sung. Not only did we sing Deb's hymn, but I played the guitar on another song, and all the kids participated in a choir. Lovely. But the highlight of the service was something else altogether. At a certain point in the service, a somber fellow read aloud the names of alumni, trustees, and faculty of the school of Psychology who had died since the founding of the school. At each name, a loud, beautiful bell sounded one note. The best part: a cherubic little infant, maybe a year old, cooing with glee at each peal of the bell. Looking Back, Looking Ahead indeed.

Christmas poetry...

...available here.

Happy 40th!

We had a great open-house birthday party yesterday. Thanks to all who came! Deb and her mom put on a fabulous spread, and we enjoyed the company of many of our great friends, who stopped by to chat and well-wish. By the end of the evening we were socially exhausted, but very very grateful.

Birthday bashing

It was Debra's 40th this past week. "What would you like for your birthday?" I asked her, not really wanting a specific suggestion, but hoping she'd point me in a fruitful direction. "Oh, something that makes me feel young," she responded. "Or something that helps me be comfortable getting old."



Taking her at her word, she received on her birthday the following small gifts:

A can of Monster Energy Drink
A can of Ensure
A copy of the Onion
A copy of the Large Print Edition of Reader's Digest
A pair of funky rectangular mirror sunglasses
A pair of half-moon reading glasses
A pair of skimpy unmentionables
A pair of gramma briefs
A bag of chocolates
A can of prunes
A pair of extreme athletic socks
A pair of support hose

Plus something a bit less of a gag-gift, which we'll blog about later.